Hillsboro People Part 22

"No, we're not much for _clothes!_" said Mrs. McCartey, comfortably tucking up her worn and faded sleeves. "Haven't we all of us enough good clothes to go to Ma.s.s in, and that's a'plenty! The rest of Pat's money goes to gettin' lots of good food for the children, bless their red faces and fat little bellies! and laying by a dollar or so a week against the rainy day. Children can play better, anyhow, with only overalls and shirts. The best times for kids is the cheapest!"

J.M. thought of the heavy-eyed, hara.s.sed professors of his acquaintance, working nights and Sundays at hack work to satisfy the nervous ambitions of their wives to keep up appearances, and gave a sudden swift embrace to the ragged child on his lap, little Molly, who had developed an especial cult for him, following him everywhere with great pansy eyes of adoring admiration.

On his first expedition out of the yard since his illness, he was touched by the enthusiastic interest which all Main Street took in his progress.

Women with babies came down to nearly every gate to pa.s.s the time of day with Rosalie, on whose arm he leaned, and to say in their varying foreign accents that they were glad to see the sick gentleman able to be out.

Since J.M. had had a chance at first-hand observation of the variety of occupation forced upon the mother of seven, he was not surprised that they wore more or less dilapidated wrappers and did not Marcel-wave their hair.

Now he noticed the motherly look in their eyes, and the exuberant health of the children laughing and swarming about them. When he returned to the house he sat down on the porch to consider a number of new ideas which were springing up in his mind, beginning to return to its old vigor. Mrs.

McCartey came out to see how he had stood the fatigue and said: "Sure you look smarter than before you went! It inter_est_ed you now, didn't it, to have a chance really to see the old place?"

"Yes," said J.M., "it did, very much."

Mrs. McCartey went on: "I've been thinkin' so many times since you come how much luckier you are than most Yankees that come back to their old homes. It must seem so good to you to see the houses just swarmin' with young life and to know that the trees and yards and rocks and brooks that give you such a good time when you was a boy, are goin' on givin' good times to a string of other boys."

J.M. looked at her with attentive, surprised eyes. "Why, do you know," he cried, "it _does_ seem good, to be sure!"

The other did not notice the oddness of his accent as she ended meditatively: "You can never get me to believe that it don't make old Yankees feel low in their minds to go back to their old homes and find just a few white-headed rheumatickers potterin' around, an' the gra.s.s growing over everything as though it was a molderin' graveyard that n.o.body iver walked in, and sorra sign of life anyway you look up and down the street."

J.M.'s mind flew back to the summer home of the president of Middletown.

"Good gracious," he exclaimed, "you're right!"

Mrs. McCartey did not take in to the full this compliment, her mind being suddenly diverted by the appearance of a tall figure at the door of the farther wing of the house. "Say, Uncle Jerry," she said, lowering her voice, "Stefan Petrofsky asked me the other day if I thought you would let him talk to you about Ivan some evening?"

"Why, who are they, anyhow?" asked J.M. "I've often wondered why they kept themselves so separate from the rest of us." As he spoke he noticed the turn of his phrase and almost laughed aloud.

"Petrofsky's wife, poor thing, died since they come here, and now there's only Stefan, he's the father, and Ivan, he's the boy. He's awful smart they say, and Stefan, he's about kilt himself to get the boy through the high school. He graduated this spring and now Stefan he says he wants him to get some _more_ education. He says their family, back in Russia, was real gentry and he wants Ivan to learn a lot so that he can help the poor Roosians who come here to do the right thing by the government--"

"_ What_?" asked J.M. "I don't seem to catch his idea."

"Well, no more do I, sorra bit," confessed Mrs. McCartey serenely. "Not a breath of what he meant got to me, but what he _said_ was that Ivan's schoolin' had put queer ideas in his head to be an anarchist or somethin'

and he thought that maybe more schoolin' would drive out _thim_ ideas and put in other ones yet. Hasn't it a foolish sound, now?" She appealed to J .M. for a sympathy she did not get.

"It sounds like the most interesting case I ever heard of," he cried, with a generous looseness of superlative new to him. "Is Ivan that tall, shy, sad-looking boy who goes with his father to work?"

"That's _him_. An' plays the fiddle fit to tear the heart out of your body, and reads big books till G.o.d knows what hour in the mornin'. His father, he says _he_ don't know what to do with him ... There's a big, bad devil of a Polack down to the works that wants him to join the anarchists in the fall and go to----"

J.M. rose to his feet and hurried down the porch toward the Petrofsky wing of the house, addressing himself to the tall, grave-faced figure in the doorway. "Oh, Mr. Petrofsky, may I have a few minutes' talk with you about your son?" he said.

III

The registrar of Middletown College, being a newcomer, saw nothing unusual in the fact that the librarian came to his office on matriculation day to enroll as a freshman a shy, dark-eyed lad with a foreign name; but the president and older professors were petrified into speechlessness by the news that old J.M. had returned from parts unknown with a queer-looking boy, who called the old man uncle. Their amazement rose to positive incredulity when they heard that the fastidious, finical old bachelor had actually installed a raw freshman in one of his precious tower-rooms, always before inexorably guarded from the mildest and most pa.s.sing intrusion on their hallowed quiet.

The president made all haste to call on J.M. and see the phenomenon with his own eyes. As discreetly as his raging curiosity would allow him, he fell to questioning the former recluse. When he learned that J.M. had spent six weeks in Woodville, no more explanation seemed needed. "Oh, of course, your old home?"

"Yes," said J.M., "my old home."

"And you had a warm welcome there, I dare say?"

"Yes, indeed," said J.M.

"Found the old town in good condition?"

"Excellent!" this with emphasis.

The president saw it all, explaining it competently to himself. "Yes, yes, I see it from here--vacation spent in renewing your youth playing with the children--promised to go back at Christmas, I suppose."

"Oh, yes, of course," said J.M.

"Children cried when you came away, and gave you dotty little things they'd made themselves?"

"Just like that," with a reminiscent smile.

"Well, well," the president got to his feet. "Of course, most natural thing in the world to take an interest in your brothers' and sisters'

children."

J.M. did not contradict the president. He never contradicted the presidents. He outlasted them so consistently that it was not necessary.

This time he took off his gla.s.ses and rubbed them on an awkwardly fashioned chamois spectacle-wiper made for him by little Molly McCartey.

He noticed the pattern of the silk in his visitor's necktie and it made him think of one of Rosalie Loyette's designs. He smiled a little.

The president regarded this smiling silence with suspicion. He c.o.c.ked his eye penetratingly upon his librarian. "But it is very queer, J.M., that as long as I have known you, I never heard that you _had_ any family at all."

J.M. put his clean and polished spectacles back on his nose and looked through them into the next room, where Ivan Petrofsky sat devouring his first lesson in political economy. Then he turned, beaming like an amiable sphinx upon his interrogator. "Do you know--I never realized it myself until just lately," he said.

BY ABANA AND PHARPAR

Fields, green fields of Shining River, Lightly left too soon In the stormy equinoctial, In the hunter's moon,--

Snow-blown fields of Shining River I shall once more tread; I shall walk their crested hollows, Living or dead.

FINIS

To old Mrs. Prentiss, watching apprehensively each low mountain dawn, the long, golden days of the warm autumn formed a series of blessed reprieves from the loom which hung over her. With her inherited and trained sense of reality, she could not cheat herself into forgetting, even for a moment, that her fate was certain, but, nevertheless, she took a breathless enjoyment in each day, as it pa.s.sed and did not bring the dreaded change in her life. She spoke to her husband about this feeling as they sat on the front step one October evening, when the air was as mild as in late May, breaking the calm silence, in which they usually sat, by saying, "Seems as though this weather was just made for us, don't it, father?"

The old man stirred uneasily in his chair. "I dun'no'--seems sometimes to me as though I'd ruther have winter come and be done with it. If we've got to go as soon as cold weather sets in, we might as well go and have it over with. As 'tis, I keep on saying good-by in my mind to things and folks every minute, and then get up in the morning to begin it all again.

This afternoon I was down the river where I saved Hiram's life when he was a little fellow--the old black whirl-hole. I got to thinking about that time, I never was real sure till then I wouldn't be a coward if it come right down _to_ it. Seems as though I'd been more of a man ever since.

It's been a real comfort to me to look at that whirl-hole, and that afternoon it come over me that after this there wouldn't be a single thing any more to remind us of anything _good_ or bad, we've ever done. It'll be most as if we hadn't lived at all. I just felt as though I _couldn't_ go away from everything and everybody I've ever known down to Hiram's stuffy little flat. And yet I suppose we are real lucky to have such a good son as Hiram now the others are all gone. I dun'no' what we'd do if 'tweren't for him."